Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses are very welcome. It strikes me that Richard Griffith did a fantastic job in being able to value every house, every piece of farmland and every business in 12 years between 1848 and 1860. I might be slightly wrong on that. What a remarkable job to do setting out on a horse, and here we are using valuations from 1988. It seems extraordinary, and that was an original valuation rather than a revaluation. I never quite understood that. I realise the area is more complex now in terms of types of businesses and so on, but we have the advantage of satellite mapping and IT systems that will multiply the value of an individual property. I accept that the job cannot be done without the people but it is extraordinary that in the 21st century it is taking longer to do than somebody who set out in the 19th century with such rudimentary assets.

I want to focus on my constituency of Kildare and use some of the experience of that because it is a fairly recent revaluation. I support what was set out in the previous legislation in that the revaluations are more regular. It is right that that does not fall off track because it stops and that we will not have the shocks when there is a big gap in the valuation timeline. From observation, however, I would have questions about some of the methodology. How does that change?

In the case of a retail premises, the front is valued at something, the middle is given another value and the back is valued at something else again. If it is a very big premises, the owner can get a greater value for that piece at the back that is given a lower valuation. Are the officials considering things like undermining main streets by virtue of the fact that there is a bigger portion of that more expensive piece to the front? It makes it difficult to absorb it. It was very difficult not to draw that conclusion when examining how the revaluation happened. There were big variations. For example, the equine sector was very heavily hit in places like Kildare, which was not the case in the past. Do the officials consider those in terms of the changes they will make when it comes to the revaluation?